We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and
teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried out
as never before. The movement is irresistible; it brings with it
exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction,
with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of
partial blindness which belong to intellectual myopia. The specialist is
idealized almost into sublimity in Browning's "Burial of the Grammarian."
We never need fear that he will undervalue himself. To be the supreme
authority on anything is a satisfaction to self-love next door to the
precious delusions of dementia. I have never pictured a character more
contented with himself than the "Scarabee" of this story.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 1, 1891.
O. W. H.
THE POET
AT THE
BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I
The idea of a man's "interviewing" himself is rather odd, to be sure. But
then that is what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half the time
to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out
to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal
property he had forgotten in his inventory.
--You don't know what your thoughts are going to be beforehand? said the
"Member of the Haouse," as he calls himself.
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